In college, due dates and deadlines come at students from all directions. Class assignments, financial aid, scholarships, registration, drops and adds – all of these can be overwhelming to monitor. Unlike in high school, no one in the college setting is likely to give you multiple reminders about these dates, nor is anyone likely to check up on you if you miss a deadline or do not turn in an assignment. The burden for keeping track of due dates and deadlines, both in and out of the college classroom, is up to you, and this task should be taken extremely seriously.
Policies about late or missing tests and assignments are stated in most class syllabi. Many college instructors will not accept late work in the absence of dire circumstances (serious medical issues, car accidents, death of a family member, etc.) for which you will be required to provide documentation (doctor’s note, accident report, obituary, etc.). It is your job to comply with the conditions of a particular instructor’s syllabus if you want an opportunity to turn in an assignment or take a test late. I drop my students’ lowest quiz grades and this can help if a quiz is missed for a reason that does not meet the criteria for a makeup quiz to be authorized.
Be mindful that missing tests can cause major test security problems for instructors, as they may not be able to return the completed tests to the rest of the class or may have to write a whole new test to give you if the test has already been returned to the rest of the class. If an instructor makes special arrangements for you to take a makeup test, do not fail to follow through. Your instructors have extremely busy schedules and may even be giving you the test at a time where they are not being paid for doing so.
Missing college deadlines outside of the classroom can have disastrous results – like not being able to graduate on time, not being eligible for financial aid, not being considered for a helpful scholarship, or not being able to get registered for required classes. Deadlines for transferring to another college or university and deadlines for graduate school applications are especially rigid and can set you back a year or more in your educational plans. At the colleges where I presently teach, you can find many of these crucial due dates and deadlines in the current class schedule and the college catalog. Your friendly student services departments, such as Records, Financial Aid, and the Transfer Center (whatever they may be called at your school), can fill you in on the other ones.
Procrastination will not serve you well in keeping on top of due dates and deadlines. One approach to managing all of this time-sensitive information is to consolidate them into one planner, whether it is on paper or digital, and to give yourself advance reminders of when an important date is coming up. It may seem like a lot of work to get everything initially in the planner, but it will be well worth it in the end.
